(Brzesc nad Bugiem 1930–1999 Krakow)
Jardin des Plantes, 1975, titled, signed and dated Lebenstein 1975 on the reverse with dedication: à Nicole et Henri Ronse très amicalement, oil and acrylic on canvas, 89 x 130 cm, framed

Provenance:
The artist
L’ Autre Musée a.s.b.l., Brussels (Ms. Ronse)
acquired from the above by the present owners, c. 1990–1992
Private Collection, Brussels

Born in Brest, Poland, on 5 January 1930, Lebenstein studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw after spending years in concentration camps. His artistic career started with the exhibition of young visual artists “Against the War, Against Fascism” at the Warsaw Arsenal in 1955. The originality of Lebenstein’s art, saturated with existential fears and fantastic figures, in which the anthropomorphic forms are merely alluded to or converted into hallucinatory shadows, obtained the very early recognition of French critics, who awarded him the Grand Prix at the First International Biennale of Young Artists in Paris in 1959.

The artist’s imagination, most strongly inspired by the great texts of world culture, was stimulated by the mythologies of ancient civilisations like Assyria, Babylon, Egypt and Greece, as well as by the Bible. Lebenstein believed that the road to modernity led through the processing of tradition. His own “Zoology Lesson” also occupied a central place in his art, emphasising the biological and physiological foundations of human sensuality.

Lebenstein’s largest official retrospective in Poland was held in 1992. The artist’s creative path and achievements were finally summed up in an exhibition titled “Etapy / Stages”, presented in Paris and several Polish cities in the year preceding the painter’s death in 1999. Lebenstein’s art reveals a distinct and independent creative style that is recognised worldwide, proven by the fact that his works are preserved, among other places, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.